Universally Digital

Universally Digital

Services

Hello, we’re Starbit. Our work is universally digital:

cutting edge websites

game-changing apps

rock solid infrastructure

We combine strategic insight, dynamic creativity and full stack development. Our 100% in-house team possess extensive experience with Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. So whether you need support with your e-commerce site or have a brand new idea for an app, talk to us about becoming your all-in-one web designer, developer and support team today.

Tilly Dyson (Starbit’s latest recruit) interviews Jonathan Stevens (CEO and Creative Director) on the eve of the company’s 5th birthday to get an insight into where Starbit came from and where the team are going next.

Team

We are a small but firmly established company, with specialist in-house design and development teams.
Our collective skills span digital strategy, brand identity, graphic design, full stack development and hardware provisioning.

Jonathan Stevens

CEO & Creative Director

Jonathan provides project management and creative direction for Starbit. He is an experienced digital designer with more than ten years worth of multimedia projects to his name. He founded Starbit with the launch of their first website in 2005 and formed the limited company in 2011. Throughout the evolution of Starbit, his pursuit of design innovation in the digital space has remained the lynchpin.

Jonathan is extremely proud of the outstanding team of designers and developers who have joined him along the way to make Starbit what it is in 2017. Day-to-day he likes nothing better than throwing new challenges at them and witnessing the plethora of great ideas that get bounced back.

Having undertaken an MA (Hons) dissertation on climate change and a subsequent MSc in Environmental Sustainability, Jonathan continues a keen interest in environmental issues. He is an avid reader of non-fiction on the subject and, where he can, looks to reduce his carbon footprint in various ways. These include solar panels on his roof, cycling almost everywhere and growing his own vegetables.

Carine is a full-stack developer with several years of experience working both as a freelancer and for various web agencies in France. She comes from the mountainous region around Grenoble, home to a thriving tech and start-up scene. On moving to the UK to further her academic studies, she joined Starbit and decided to stick around.

Carine possesses a versatile digital skillset spanning HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript/jQuery and MySQL. She has a French diploma in multimedia (2 year HND equivalent) and a BSc in Computing with distinction (from Edinburgh Napier University) covering user experience and web technologies. She is both curious and ambitious, never resting on her laurels and always seeking to improve as a developer. She also likes helping others and has a real interest in teaching web technologies. Her goal over the next year is to take on more project management duties to make the best use of the full gamut of her personal skills.

Carine has recently started a vegan way of life, part of which is motivated by her sincere love of animals. She takes care of four cats in France and misses them a lot. She is also fond of the countryside and cycling with many years of experience in managing a French cycling association and organising competitions.

Kevin takes responsibility for heading up our development department. He is an experienced full-stack developer, able to tackle almost any coding conundrum. Very little seems to phase him and somewhere up his sleeve there would appear to be a solution for everything. He ensures the development stage of all projects are taken care of, pulling together contributions from the rest of the development team as well as the design department. He also looks after our clients in a support role, fixing things super quickly when issues arise.

Kevin studied IT and Web Application Design within the Technical Department at the Complex of Communication Schools in Gdansk. He has previously worked as a web developer in Poland, where he gained several years experience in Drupal 6 & 7 development, both in building sites from scratch and converting existing HTML sites. He is committed to improving his skills on a daily basis and is always enthusiastic about adopting new tools and ways of working. He ensures that the company’s development resources are allocated in the most efficient way possible and makes sure the rest of the team don’t get lost along the way.

Peter is our user experience designer, it's his job to create sleek, user-centric websites and web apps that are both are easy to navigate and visually appealing. His holistic approach to design involves looking at the bigger picture through information architecture and user flow diagrams, through to the finer details of wireframing user interfaces and arranging content. Peter graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University in 2014 with a BA in Graphic Arts and Design. His degree focused on the philosophy of design, which taught him how to see all types of design as mediums for interaction. After this he spent two years in his first role as a user experience designer reading up on interaction design and the theory behind digital design, a pattern which he continued when spending a year working freelance in France. Peter brought this knowledge and behaviour with him to Starbit and continues to search for simpler and more intuitive ways to improve our outputs.

Peter is an outgoing type, both in personality and the fact he likes to be outdoors as much as possible, pursuing a huge array of interests including cycling, skiing and climbing. He is also a bit musical and has played bass semi-professionally for a while, including as part of a band in the Alps. Somehow in the recent past, he has also found time to design a commemorative jersey to celebrate the Tour de France coming to Yorkshire and written a screenplay that was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Hantian is a long-standing member of the Starbit team. He is a graphic designer with an eclectic mix of high-level software skills, encompassing the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, After-Effects) and Blender (for 3D work). He specialises in brand identity development and user experience (UX) design for our digital projects. He also takes responsibility for digital product testing, working closely with the development department at every stage of a project.

Originally from Nanjing in China, Hantian built the foundations of his interests in graphic and digital design during his undergraduate study of Fine Arts in China. Following this and two years worth of commercial experience in a Chinese creative studio, he came to the UK to study a masters degree in Design & Digital Media (awarded with distinction) and is currently taking this further with a PhD in Mobile UX at Edinburgh College of Art. He believes that user experience is all around us, and that all forms of design need to be understood by all relevant stakeholders. Hantian is always seeking out new creative ideas to make each design different, iconic and self-explanatory. He loves working collaboratively with clients and the rest of the team and has a strong conviction in the best results coming from the maximum possible level of cooperation.

Hantian loves browsing Pinterest for new design ideas and reading books about UX theories. He is also a big fan of audio novels, badminton, music, guitar playing, tech devices, museums, travelling and photography.

Bertrand has joined us for a four month placement which is part of his degree course in Computer Science at exia CESI. He is very passionate about development, already being proficient in PHP, SQL, HTML and Java Script, and learning C# and Python. He possesses a good understanding of Wordpress which has been his main focus since starting with Starbit. He's also been able to begin picking up Drupal when his busy schedule allows. Hailing from the Champagne region of France, Bertrand confesses he finds Scotland a little cold and grey but he loves the historical architecture of Edinburgh, which almost makes it worth the pain. He has been enjoying spending time with his awesome colleagues, who have been helping him find his way in web development, and feels that this opportunity will show him more about himself and what he can accomplish in his future career.

Bertrand is a huge fan of comic books (especially X-Men) and spends a lot of time on personal computer projects, but he loves nothing more than to spend free time with his friends and family (AKA being tormented by his little nephews and nieces).